Hi,
Great forum - learned a lot going thru existing threads. Would really appreciate if you can critique and/or advise on the course selection plan for our daughter. A little background (giving this just so a proper advice is given for the course selection): she went to a STEM middle school. transferring to public high school next year. Good credentials in Math/Science (won state level math/science competitions; and qualified for AIME in 8th grade). Aspiring to go for college - hopefully to one of top-20, but not sure which field yet - most probably one of STEM math/science/engr/medical (yeah…I know too wide…basically not decided yet). Thanks in advance.
8th Grade (current main courses): Geometry+Algebra2, Physical Sciences, Spanish 1
Summer (planned): virtual high-school credits for one of required courses like Health
9th Grade (planned for 2016-17)
English Honors 1 (required - same for everyone)
Pre Calculus
Biology Honors
AP World History
Spanish 2
Freshman Writing (required - same for everyone)
Chemistry Honors
10th Grade (tentatively planned for 2017-18)
English Honors 2
AP Calculus AB
AP Physics 1
Spanish 3
Web Design H
(not decided about others - she can take 2more credits; thinking of either a 2 credit AP-stats or a combination of a 1 credit programming-class with couple required half credit courses like Art and Fitness)
11th and 12th: not decided yet OR dont have a clear idea. Idea is, by then she might have a better idea on which area interests her most and take more in-depth courses in that subject. Or is it better to have a breadth of different subjects to get admission in any area. Any advice on what Honors/AP level courses she can take based on previous courses (school offers a wide range of AP courses).
Any advice on currently planned and possible future courses will be greatly appreciated. thanks.
Not sure this sub-forum is the best place to get advice (if you want advice from experienced parents rather than hs students).
Couple of points. First talk to parents of current or incoming students or to the GC. Freshman year can take some adjustment and she has only academic classes there. If all the other freshmen are taking the required Fitness class, then she will miss out socially, and hate having to go back as an older student to take it with the freshmen.
AP world history in many schools is one of the highest workload classes. Is it usual for freshmen to take it at your school? It is a sophomore class at our school, and the sophomores find it very demanding. To give you an idea, it is far more time consuming than calculus for my sophomore. Schools do vary though and you should talk to parents whose kids have taken it at your school. (Though this class has such a broad curriculum, I can’t see how anyone could teach it without assigning a lot of work). Also you are lacking a history course for sophomore year. Have you reviewed graduation requirements for this school? 3 or 4 years of history/gov is generally required. You should also look at expectations of some of the colleges she might want to apply to.
Unless your high school is really elite, there isn’t much offered for depth. My STEMy kid took chem, bio, physics, CS APs (not that new one) and a dual enrollment science class as well as calc and stats APs and some post-calculus math. That was almost all the STEM available at her hs and some math that wasn’t available at her hs. Not sure what you mean by what classes she “can take”. Sounds like she would be eligible to take what she wants, and should take what interests her.
At our school the history and English tracks don’t have honors options for upperclassmen so an honors student interested in STEM generally takes all the core APs.
You may want to talk to people about the Web design class. She might want to jump into AP CS if that’s allowed.
You should also talk to the GC about your course listings if there is any issue about what she would like to take. Our catalog says things like “grades 11-12” or X prerequisite. In some cases that is just a guideline. In other cases, absolutely no exceptions are made. You don’t know until you ask, and the answer you get might depend on who you ask and it also probably depends on what kind of student you are.
Last point: I would map out the last two years as well. Of course it can change. But it might help your thinking about how to organize the first two years.
Thanks @mathyone - great tips.
Didnt find any parent forum in the High-shool life area and so posted here.
Clarifying a few items you highlighted:
AP World history is a common class for freshman in the high school she is going. In fact many of her friends strongly suggested that course (better grades; not as difficult as other AP’s etc.). Seems like it does have lot of writing but that is fine with her. About history/social studies in sophomore - the requirement is 3.5 credits in social studies thru high school - one credit in freshman history compulsory which she will meet with AP World history; rest she can schedule. Thinking of a 0.5 credit civics course in sophomore.
About talking to counselors - we did talk to her - but issue in this school (maybe same for most public schools ??) is not many counselors for this size of school - resulting in not much attention. We got all of 5-10mts facetime (meeting requests not accepted; one email response to multiple emails etc.) - even then its more about whether she will be completing the min requirements per each area.
About the depth of course - you are right - its a regular public high school. Only choices are AP courses (which they offer in most subjects). The thing is there is lot of prerequisite relationships - that is one reason for doubling up on science courses in freshman year (Bio and Chem).
yes plan is to tentatively decide on 11th/12th grade courses soon
There is a parents forum, look on the top level. Many parents don’t look at this forum.
Check colleges on that history requirement. Some colleges expect more than some hs’s require to graduate.
All you really need to decide now is whether to take chemistry next year or not. Everything else seems basically required, if the AP world is usual for honors freshmen. After you are in the school it will be easier to learn more about the different classes and make decisions for the following years.
In our school it’s highly unusual for kids not to do their PE/health requirement in grades 9 and 10. Grade 10 includes driver ed in health. I understand the desire to get the science pre-requisites out of the way, but if it means taking fitness as a sophomore or junior with a bunch of freshmen she may not like that. And it will be a course space where she can’t take that science class she knocked out the pre-reqs for anyhow. There are some schools where kids jump into AP science classes without prior classes but I can’t say I recommend that, unless you have physics B. I would suggest taking Physics B as a first class (If your school still offers that) but most schools have discontinued it since the college board split the already easy class into the 1 and 2 two year sequence. It was the only AP science where my daughter wished she had not taken the pre-req and the material really does not require 2 years for a mathematically advanced kid.
Most kids are not going to be able to take all the science APs. My daughter was able to schedule nearly all of them because we are on an 8 block schedule. With only 7 classes you just have to make choices. I do think that it’s more common at the schools with only 6 or 7 classes for kids to jump into the AP stem classes without a prior course. The teachers do have more instructional time in those schedules and the students have fewer classes so can work harder for each.
Freshman year is going to be hard, but doable. Your daughter is clearly incredibly smart, and her schedule reflects that. Taking bio and chem the same year is audacious, but again, doable. I am doing it right now, albeit as a sophomore not a freshman, and it’s tough, but it opened doors in terms of being able to take more AP Sciences, and I’m sure she sees the value in that.
IMO I would take AP Chem soph year and AP Bio junior year, rather than AP Physics soph year, because you can then do AP Physics senior year, and while AP Physics C is hard without prior physics experience it’s definitely doable, and AP Physics I should be fine without prior experience, plus this way she takes APs in all the sciences. From my experience, this looks very attractive to colleges and the people I know of having done it are going to top ivies.
AP World might be too much, just because she comes from a STEM background, and if she were to be struggling with it at the beginning of the year and wanted to drop down to honors history, or some other history class, that isn’t a huge deal. That being said, if World is a freshman-only class, they usually are aware there is a lot to adapt to freshman year and it’ll be a little easier at the beginning of the year.
Small changes such as upgrading to pre-calc honors will make little difference in any aspect other than Weighted GPA, and if there is no pre-calc honors it’s not even applicable anyway.
Be sure that your daughter gets involved with ECs, especially in things she is interested in. Science Olympiad/Math team/Robotics/Tutoring are all great options, if her schools offers them.
@gormar099@bvo112 and @mathyone - Thanks a lot for suggestions.
Yes - she is taking Pre Calculus (h) - I missed it in the op somehow. About the AP world history - the school offer world history (either regular, honors or as ap class) in freshman year. She currently enrolled it as AP course but if it gets too intense might change it to honors class - GC advised us that upgrading (honors to AP) is difficult to accommodate later than downgrade.
About EC - she is been part of Math, science olympiad, and FIRST Lego League during middle school (FLL from 3rd-8th grades). Plays soccer in an outside club. In high school not sure - if she will have time to participate all - she might not do robotics only because it seems to take most time (currently thinking of trying it out initially and stay in 3 clubs based on friends etc).
Her plan is to do AP’s in Chem,Bio and Physics - not sure on the order - based on her friends input AP physics1 was chosen as first but lets see.
@nhdad2012 I’d imagine it’d be more beneficial to her to take AP Chem/Bio sophomore year, rather than Physics, since they’d be more fresh in her head, but honestly she seems like she’s probably smart enough where that won’t really matter.
The reason for its dismal AP test scores is the huge concentration of freshmen and sophomores taking the class as their first AP class. Does you daughter truly like history, or is she taking it because everyone else is? Her writing skills must be at a college-level (or better than most high school students), and she should be able to write well under a time restraint. Hopefully the class trains her to do so, but to succeed in the course, you should be an adept writer, even before taking the class. By the end of the course, she should be able to write three cohesive, analytical essays in 2 hours 10 minutes after taking a 70 question multiple choice test. Many students at my school think that they are capable in writing the essays; however, the majority of students do not fare well when the APWH teacher assigns an in-class comparative or continuity/change essay, so overestimating oneself only leads to failure. However, if writing and English is her forte, then by all means take the course.
In addition, the class focuses on trends and analysis rather than memorization, since it covers a time span from 10000 BC to the current day. This may be easier for some people (not having to memorize each specific date or act), but if you cannot analyze documents/information and create a thesis, you may struggle in both the multiple choice and the essay sections. Your daughter seems remarkably gifted in STEM; however, I caution you in signing her up for advanced history classes in freshman year, especially when she may not be ready. Is she comfortable in receiving 5-8 documents, reading and annotating them in 10 minutes, then writing a full essay with thesis, grouping, 3+ POV statements, additional document, and analysis in each document?
Again, she need not know how to do all of this before she takes the course; however, she may be overwhelmed if she does not have prior experience in an advanced history class and lacks the ability in analysis and viewing overall trends/writing essays under pressure.
Her grades in the class may not suffer, given that most freshman in her school take the course. However, the AP test is the whole purpose of the class (unless she does not want college credit in WH), and if the class does not provide the rigor that she needs, then she may find herself struggling to prepare for the exam.
Regarding AP world, very few people say it’s easy. However, asking whether the student is comfortable doing that type of essay is missing the point. In schools like ours and the OP’s, AP world is the first AP class most of the students take. A decent teacher will teach the kids how to write those essays. As far as a STEM kids not handling it, mine got the A and the 5 with less time invested than many of her classmates (though still a lot of time). Our kids get a year of regular world history in 9th grade which lightens the load, but it’s still something like 8-10 hours per week, which is tough on our 8 class schedule. Our school belongs to the outline school of thought, which makes the class extremely time consuming. I have mixed feeling about those outlines, but our kids pass the AP exam. Not sure what my STEM kid’s practice essay scores were, and they had different teachers so not directly comparable, but my writer kid, whose writing has wowed a bunch of teachers and has won many writing awards, is still not getting the top score on her practice essays.
My older one commented that the kids who didn’t take AP world and took APUSH the following year were at a noticeable disadvantage. Probably they were the weaker students to begin with, but she still felt that they missed out on that training on how to write these essays, which takes a while to master, and that made it a lot harder for them in subsequent classes.
How is a 9th grader supposed to have prior experience in an advanced history class? Middle school history is a joke. You have to start somewhere, and most kids start in AP world. I think the low scores have more to do with kids not being prepared to put in the work. For a kid who goes from middle school history with maybe an hour a week of homework, to AP world, with maybe 10 hours, if they aren’t prepared to step up the effort by that much, yes, there will be problems.